Empower Your Business with Digital Transformation Sales in UAE

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the pandemic has elevated health data and its uses beyond imagining with governments around the world looking to track and trace what is happening in their own backyards here in the uee the response to the pandemic has been held as world leading and one of the pillars of that success has been health data and technology and how they have been used here to fight the pandemic but it's a field that promises much improvement in healthcare systems far beyond the pandemic so today i'm delighted to be joined by atif albrechi the ceo of abu dhabi health data services to unpack what this means atif welcome to a b talks thank you thanks scott so this is a massive area um which has become all encompassing for governments around the world i think probably just give our viewers an overview of the work you do at malafi how do you help exchange information and what are the benefits of that to really understand malafi we just need to go back maybe around 15 years ago abu dhabi around 2004 went through a major health care reform where insurance or health insurance was introduced it was a mandatory universal participation uh what the government also then did is established a company called saha to manage and run all the government-owned healthcare facilities and they they encouraged the private sector to play a bigger role in providing care so that's where like the likes of medic clinic vps you know cleveland clinic started providing care and really give patients more access to care and that played a key role in terms of enhancing the quality of care in abu dhabi but then it created also more fragmentation you know because it's the same patient who is moving across all those facilities all the government facilities in sahab were connected through one unified medical record through one electronic medicare record system but the challenge then was you know the same patient moves to the private these systems are not interlinked it created a lot of care coordination challenges it also resulted in over-utilization of unnecessary repetition of tests so maybe around four years ago the the idea of establishing a platform that will facilitate the exchange of health information across the emirates came into the you know the the discussions with the department of health which is today regulating the healthcare sector in abu dhabi yeah and in 2017 we started working on uh defining a business case for building uh such a platform looking at you know how can this platform uh be operated what's the the best technology architecture that should be should should be put in place what's the business model you know how our different stakeholders are going to benefit from such platform and what we did basically we build a central clinical data repository that connects with all the electronic medical record systems across all the facilities in abu dhabi for every resident you know regardless of where that patient moves across the healthcare facilities all his or her data is going to be available in this central clinical data repository and then we give easy access to the healthcare providers to query and to look at the previous medicare record of that patient whenever that visit happens that seems like a daunting task it seems like a massive task how on earth have you approached that project to take all that i mean how many people are we talking about we're talking a significant number of records there how on earth have you done that yeah so we're talking about around 2000 healthcare facilities uh you know for a population of around three million yeah um and really it starts with with proper planning at the beginning so we spent a lot of time to be honest putting a business case and plan and and discuss with the different stakeholders engaging you know being at the healthcare providers and the emirates uh the the regulator played a key role in terms of putting a very clear policy uh with um with a timeline that provides the sense of urgency you know in terms of connecting to malafi uh so they did not leave just an open timeline there was there were deadlines uh you know put in place by the regulator uh so that creates the sense of urgency for everyone to connect and then really the pandemic showed the value of this this platform and really it made the the program accelerate and for the different stakeholders being the healthcare providers the public health department the different stakeholders in the healthcare sector to really see the value and really to get engaged more in terms of ensuring that we deliver this platform fast we start seeing the value and the outcomes of such platform well i mean to me it makes sense when you look at you know coronavirus and what happened in 2020 but what have been those values you know that value that you've seen um both in terms of the patient perhaps experience accessing a healthcare system and those providers who have now signed up and joined in the malafi project yeah so you know the the the government in the uae and is happening for the inaudible so with that mass amount of pcr tests that were happening you know that created also reporting challenges right to the department of health or the public health department and also it created challenges in terms of monitoring the spread of the disease so if we depend on manual reporting which was the process you know before having a system like uh malafi yeah it was creating a lot of overhead for the different stakeholders being the providers who have to report or even the public health department who need to you know receive those reports and then do the contact tracing yeah and looking at the spread of the disease medici helped in playing a role in automating this process it was challenging i mean in the early months of the pandemic you know getting all the labs connected uh was a challenging experience you know the labs had different competing priorities then on top of that they had to connect you know their lab information systems to to malafi so it was challenging for the different stakeholders but then what what it really played a role in is that it you know once we connected all these labs we were able to get insights about the you know the spread of the diseases you know the infectious rate across the community and that right then played a key role in terms of early prevention measures that have been taken to contain the spread of the disease across different areas it played a key role in enhancing the you know the the coordination and the communication between the different stakeholders and managing the pandemic uh at later stage when we you know when when when antibody tests and vaccination programs started we were able to to link you know the pcr tests with with people who are getting vaccinated and then link them with also the medical record um you know of the patient and to really provide different insights for the public health department who are really playing a key role in coordinating the efforts of the everyone in the in in the healthcare sector so that was the real value of having such a platform i mean i can't imagine how you could have tackled that with an old-fashioned manual system i mean was it it was just good foresight and planning that as this pandemic came you had this you had this foundation of a system that you could actually turn on and attract people into yeah i think you know to be honest we were lucky by having the foundation when you know and so we were able to really utilize this asset to to play a key role in the pandemic response you know the the the manual reporting is a great system we're not saying but to manage such a pandemic having you know a manual surveillance is going to create a lot of challenges now within all of that i mean ai is prevalent in all of our lives um how have you integrated artificial intelligence into this process because i imagine this isn't just people tapping on computers all the time there's there's programming and algorithms at work here as well yeah so that was also something that we planned on from the beginning because a health information exchange has what we can say you know different options or different architecture design that you can deploy so we we selected an architecture design that will enable us to do predictive analytics in the future and to be able to get insights from the data that we have so in 2020 one of the key projects that we we adopted was to collect two years of historical medical record of patients put put it into a machine learning algorithm that can then you know predict the potential diseases of people who are at high risk across the population for the next 12 months wow so we we did a proof of concept last year to to take specific segment of the population apply machine learning to twitter for their historical data record and to then uh look at you know the the potential risk of certain population of specific diseases and this year we're working with the non-communicable department at the department of health to really operationalize the insights that we're getting from from these uh you know from from those insights in terms of doing uh more population health programs uh you know coordinating care for people who are at high risk of certain conditions and that's really the power of having such a platform when you are able to collect uh such mass data of medical records you can always apply ai and machine learning to really drive insights that can predict uh the future so that you can plan better and do more uh proactive and preventative programs so if i'm in abu dhabi your algorithms are going to be looking at my medical records and going scott you need to lose weight you need to do some exercise otherwise you're at risk of abcd conditions so we give high level population health insights to the department of health at this stage we don't provide insights directly to the to the to the yeah i mean it's because we still don't have a a patient porter or a channel that's going to provide that level of access to the patient that's something that's being studied for to be implemented in the future yeah but at this stage you are providing it for the public government can prioritize where it exactly and then we'll be we're going to be providing specific insights for the care providers within our clinical portal you know to give them insights about the potential high-risk patients so that that can be a key aspect when they're you know providing care and something that can help them in their decision support you were talking earlier about the business case just talk to me a little bit because you had a little bit of not opposition but you had different players with different systems and different priorities and you've managed to harmonize that and perhaps coronavirus has been the thing that has accelerated that cooperation now that you're there what is the business case for for the for the providers well how does this make their lives better um how does it does it improve revenue does it improve operational efficiency and also what's the benefit for the patients you know the ultimate end user the ultimate customer yeah so you know for the providers uh such a platform it enhanced their operational efficiency you know usually when you as a as a caregiver when you see a patient you have limited time the more summarized information you can get it can help you in providing the light the right level of diagnosis and decision uh you know and providing care to that patient so what we do in malaysia is that we consolidate that information so instead of depending on you know asking the patient we can give you a quick summary a snapshot of that patient which will then make their you know hospital operations much more smoother it also helps in in providing a better experience for the patient which then you know increases the patient satisfaction with that facility which then you know potentially then play a role and also inc you know in improving their business operations so these aspects are really in you know playing a key role for enhancing the operations of the providers uh at the end also all the stakeholders being if it's the healthcare providers if it's the payer you know we we're all serving the the the patient at the end so anything that can help in providing a better patient experience you know definitely going to be benefiting the stakeholders indirectly so thousands of healthcare providers three million people a journey that started years ago where you at right now then everyone's connected every record's connected where where you're at in your your journey and where do you go next yeah so we have more than 1 400 healthcare facilities uh already connected that gives us a market share of around 97 of the market episodes all the hospitals are already connected right the big clinics and centers and the medium size now there are still small clinics and centers that are in the process of completing their uh you know technical requirements to get connected with us and few pharmacists in abu dhabi also completing the the technical readiness for them to connect to medicine so 2020 was a learning curve for for nearly every sex in every industry what would you say were the biggest things you learned as an organization in 2020 and were there things that you pass it force you down where you actually think actually that made is better yeah so you know one of the key aspects is planning you know when um when you have a solid plan it helps you when you know whenever you need to execute so having the following the fund the foundation that we built based on the proper plan it really paid off when you know when the pandemic started another key aspect is collaboration you know we we had all the stakeholders engaged from the beginning and that stakeholder management and engagement you know it enabled us to collaborate better uh to you know work together uh and you know understanding our you know competing priorities uh but then to be able to fulfill you know the needs of the sector so those were like key lessons learned from us you know in terms of early stakeholder management and such a big platform you know when when you're coordinating with different stakeholders uh you know engaging them uh managing that change management plays a key role in ensuring that you have a smooth execution and then you start seeing the outcomes uh you know of such a platform you talk there about public and private sector collaboration i mean i've seen outside commentators say that the the collaboration in the uee between the private and the public sector has been unprecedented and that's been one of again one of the secrets of this success while dealing with uh with coronavirus how important has that been and how proud of you you know proud are you of both malafi's role in that but also how the public and private sector both stepped up to work together i mean that was extremely important well if it wasn't for all the stakeholders really collaborating with us you know to and and they had competing priorities you know all healthcare providers they had so many other demands yeah uh you know but they were always playing a key role you know supporting the initiative and that comes from their understanding of the importance of hazard having such a platform seeing really the value of of data sharing and and this pandemic really showed that you know we are stronger together you know in in any response to any pandemic so all the healthcare sector you know being working together understanding our own you know priorities played a key role and you know i recall for example you know that urgency that we were getting from the department of health we were going to facilities that had various competing parts in terms of you know setting up new testing facilities you know ramping up their resources you know managing their er departments uh yet you know they had to also meet the malefic requirements you know working with with with our teams late at night to make sure that we meet that requirements uh that was key for us you know for for managing this pandemic 97 connected so within that what's the kind of breakdown who is connected to you now then so how many hospitals how many clinics how's that breakdown look like so hospitals in abu dhabi all of them are connected every single every single hospital in abu dhabi is already connected to malafi and then the big clinical centers all of them are connected we're talking about the small clinics and centers yeah we're talking about maybe around 100 or 110 clinical centers that are still not connected uh you know due to interoperability challenges with their current system so they're working on completing that integration requirements and we're hoping to have them on board very very soon and we're talking about maybe around 450 or 500 other pharmacies the you know the standalone pharmacies that are completing their integration requirements that must be tremendously reassuring for patients when they go into hospitals and also must be incredibly useful for the staff work in those hospitals that whatever hospital they go to in abu dhabi they're connected to your network definitely yeah so for us you know we we are looking at what additional data points that we can capture uh you know for the to to provide better insights for the healthcare providers one of the key aspects are images so today we're exchanging radiology reports but you know many of the users have said okay can we exchange images so that i can put i can pull the ct scan or the x-ray that was done for that patient so that will be one of the key priorities the other aspect is driving better insights from the data that we have and providing you know more actionable insights to the public health department who then can better you know serve the the healthcare sector in abu dhabi and at the same time to also provide insights and actionable insights to the care givers so today we're giving them that unified medical record in an easy to navigate way but can we also provide them predictive insights that you know can help them in their uh support for that patient so these are the key priorities for us you know capturing additional data points and additional value and then from the in terms of you know using ai and data analytics to provide more actionable insights for the different stakeholders so i'm going to repeat something i read the other day which sounded and it sounded clever and i'm going to ask you how much you agree with this someone was talking about healthcare and healthcare attack and they said that data now is as important as the surgeon's knife would you agree with that statement i totally agree because you know at the end understanding the current and the previous condition of that patient is a key aspect in providing the right decision and the right care today data is easily available but if it's not presented in an easy way for the for the healthcare provider to understand it and read it to action on it very very quickly that data becomes useless so having you know an hie or having robust electronic medical record system it can really play a key role instead of you know going and looking through papers or you know notes having data structured in a system is really key in terms of providing you know actionable information that the caregiver can provide to the right level of diagnosis and support for that patient atif genuinely pleasure talking to you on a b talks today same here thanks a lot scott thank you